News and notes from around town:

• Signs of a turnaround in the Lawrence housing market have been a little harder to spot recently. During the first quarter of 2011, building permits for new home construction are way down compared to a year ago. Builders in the first three months of 2011 have started 19 new single-family homes and two new duplexes. That’s down from 45 single-family homes and three duplexes during the same time period in 2010.

Fortunately for builders, there have been a couple of areas that have seen increased activity. During the first quarter, work began on 55 new apartment units, and the number of remodeling jobs in the city increased from 68 to 84. Overall, the city has issued permits for $13.9 million worth of work. That’s down from $16.1 million in the first quarter of 2010.

As much as Lawrence wants to have an economy driven by the biosciences and other high-tech ventures, at the moment the city’s economy is still highly dependent on construction. As Mayor Aron Cromwell recently told me, it will be hard to say Lawrence’s economy has truly turned the corner until the local construction industry recovers from the recession.

“The architects, builders, sub-contractors, engineers are still suffering,” Cromwell said. “It is hard to tell them that we’re pulling out of this. I think other areas of the economy are seeing improvements, but unfortunately we have a lot of people involved in the building industry who are not. As the economy improves, I hope construction will come back. That would help us tremendously.”

It will be interesting to see what the “new normal” looks like in this post real estate bubble world.

• Budget-makers for local governments have had to get used to a new normal as a result of the slowdown in building activity. For years, it was nothing for the city of Lawrence’s property tax base to grow by 5 percent to 9 percent per year. But that hasn’t been the case the last several years. It also won’t be the case in 2011. The Douglas County appraiser’s office has released its preliminary estimates for assessed valuation totals for 2011. In Lawrence, the tax base is estimated to have grown 0.8 percent — or $6.6 million — from Jan. 1, 2010, to Jan. 1, 2011. Countywide, assessed valuation is expected to be up 0.9 percent, or about $9 million.

The city’s assessed value totals grow either by homes and real estate appreciating in value, new construction that adds new value, or annexation that shifts tax value away from a township and into a city. None of the three has happened in much quantity over the last year.

But this does mean that your property taxes likely won’t go up much for 2012, unless local politicians take the always-uncomfortable step of raising the property tax mill levy. The county did that last year, but the city has said no to that strategy for several years now. With two new faces on the commission, we’ll have to watch whether that changes. Here’s betting it doesn’t for 2012.

• Lawrence’s tax base struggles are similar to those in Douglas County’s other cities. Baldwin’s tax base is estimated to have grown by 0.2 percent and Lecompton’s is expected to decline by 0.01 percent — or roughly by $200. Eudora was the big winner. Its assessed valuation is up by 1.2 percent. The bigger winners though aren’t found in the cities at all. The townships posted the largest increase in tax bases, by percentage. Eudora Township is up by 3.8 percent, Clinton by 2.9, Marion by 2.2, Lecompton by 1.3, while Kanwaka and Grant townships both grew by less than 1 percent.

These numbers seem to follow recent figures for income growth in the state as well. That report showed that over the last five years, incomes in the rural parts of the state have actually grown at a higher percentage than incomes in the urban parts of the state (28.4 percent versus 19.9 percent.) It will take somebody with a better economics degree than mine to figure out what it all means. But as Hank Williams Jr. once crooned (I’m not sure what croon means, but I think it means to sing with vocal chords soaked in Jack Daniel’s), “A Country Boy Can Survive.”

• You soon will have a chance to change all these numbers by buying a new home in Lawrence. The Lawrence Home Builders Association is preparing for its annual Spring Parade of Homes. The show is set to run from April 30 to May 1 and from May 7 to May 8. Hours will be noon to 5 p.m. on all four days. The show is expected to feature 21 homes with prices ranging from $163,900 to $350,000.

For those of you wanting to plan your parade route, here’s a list of the homes and their prices:

1. 2250 Lake Pointe Drive, Unit 22: $214,900
2. 2250 Lake Pointe Drive, Unit 10: $239,900
3. 606 N Daylily Drive: $259,900
4. 622 N. Wren Drive: $299,900
5. 1519 Hanscom: $189,900
6. 1622 W. 27th Street: $163,900
7. 1008 Drum Drive: $299,900
8. 3912 Prairie Rose: $284,900
9. 3916 Blazing Star Court: $239,900
10. 3920 Dayflower: $194,900
11. 809 April Rain Road: $299,900
12. 841 Coving Drive: $282,900
13. 309 N. Carver Lane: $296,400
14. 4125 Seele Way: $210,000
15. 407 N. Blazing Star: $269,900
16. 411 N. Blazing Star: $242,900
17. Red Tail Subdivision, near E 1200 and N 1000 roads, varying prices
18. 4129 Seele Way, $209,900
19. 428 Doolittle Way, $244,900
20. 3027 Harper, $264,700
21. 209 Bramble Bend Court: $350,000

• In case you see some workers scaling the side of the city water tower at Sixth Street and Kasold Drive in the coming weeks, don’t worry, the tank hasn’t sprung a leak. Instead, T-Mobile will be installing seven antennas on the city water tower for its wireless system in the area. The city has allowed wireless carriers to do that for years, and it is not bad business. This most recent agreement calls for T-Mobile to pay the city $2,000 per month in rent, plus the rent increases by 3 percent each year. The initial length of the lease is five years.